Other forms: wheezing, wheezes
To wheeze is to breathe with a thin whistling sound. Air struggling through narrowed tubes.
It is a medical sign as well as a noise, and doctors listen for a wheeze in asthma, bronchitis and infection. Ordinary use extends it to anybody out of breath after stairs, and to old machinery, since a tired engine can wheeze too. As a noun it is the sound itself. British English has an entirely separate informal sense, where a wheeze is a clever scheme or a wangle, though that use now sounds dated.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱwes- — to pant
Old Norse
hvæsa — to hiss
Middle English
whesen
English, today
wheeze
From Middle English whesen, perhaps from Old Norse hvæsa (“to hiss”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ḱwes- (“to pant”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 39 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word